Plasma exchange has become the most common and effective therapeutic treatment of various intractable disorders and neurological diseases. Unavailability and high price of plasma products, and risk of infections lead to the development of plasma treatment devices. Selective adsorption plasma treatment is now a well established clinical practice for the treatment of myasthenia gravis, Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) etc., but is only marginally cheaper than plasma exchange procedure, and the columns are meant for plasma perfusion only. However, this can eliminate the dependence of plasma products on plasmapheresis thereby avoiding risk of infections. Though various immunoadsorption columns for plasma perfusion only are available, it is still not known to have direct haemoperfusion columns. Further, it is not known to have devices that can simplify and reduce treatment cost further by achieving plasma separation and plasma treatment in a single device or direct haemo-perfusion.
An apparatus and method is known in the art which draws blood through a blood pump and a column, and functions as a plasma separator to cause a separation of the blood cells from the plasma. The plasma is then passed through an immunoadsorbent column so that IgG proteins get adsorbed in the adsorbent, and the treated plasma is then mixed with the removed blood cells and returned to the patient. The disadvantage of such a method and apparatus is that of substantial costs. Further, such a method is to be repeated once or twice and each time the column and plasma separator is to be replaced.
Yet another method and apparatus known in the art is to withdraw the blood of a patient, which is then centrifuged to remove the plasma, which is then replaced by fresh blood plasma from a donor. A disadvantage of such a method and apparatus is that of infection in the fresh blood of a donor. Further, hemolysis can occur in the centrifuge.